Friday, June 30, 2006

Confounded Compounds: Each of these words is the synonym of a 4-letter word. Pair them up to create 8-letter words. For instance, if you saw "quotation" and "treatise", you could come up with textbook. Warning: These "compound" words are anything but textbook!

antiquated

genuine

blemish

harvest

chessman

inlet

chimney

innate

circlet

maiden

classify

municipality

completed

obligation

comprehend

oppugn

constraint

pinnacle

discomfort

placed

enthusiasm

platter

equitable

pome

fashion

remnant

fellow

spoken

forfeit

supplication

fulminate

unrestrained

When you think you have an 8-letter word, enter it here. If you're right, it will appear next to the appropriate pair.

Need help? Try dragging the words around to swap their positions. A correct pair will turn green, while a correctly-paired set in the wrong order will turn yellow.

Hints:Use a Thesaurus or Dictionary.

Answers / Solutions:Answers are usually (and will be) posted in the comments section.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Puzzle:June 23rd, 2006: Three weeks ago I was playing in The Game. One particular challenge was a timed maze (written by Stanford students Rachel Weinstein and Frank Losasso) that we had to play on a dance pad. It took my team surprisingly long, probably because we hadn't slept for 20 hours and we had failed to notice an important rule...

Now, you can share a little bit of that experience. Start clicking and see if you can figure out the rules and solve the maze. When you win, you won't be able to reset the puzzle any more -- that's deliberate.

Hints:Instructions are a little vague. Here are 3 to clarify the puzzle.

1. Only ten steps allowed to complete puzzle (11 is not accepted).2. Map is an 8x8 grid. Plotting the map using hints below makes solving easier.3. You start at (1, 1) or (1, A) with the end coordinate of (5, 5) or (5, E)(See maze map below. I would have used coordinate (0, 0) but this is also for all non math people.)

We all start (1, 1) with the option of going 'down' or 'down-left' (game-pad). Plot the current possibilities on a map (map plot). We will move 'down' for this example.

fig2: 2nd Move (left is game-pad, right is map plot)

Relocate the 'person' to the new coordinate. Mark the old position as 1 (blue). Now that we have moved down, we are presented with three new options 'down', 'right', or 'up' on the game-pad. We know from fig 1 that there is a movable space on the left of the 'person' (yellow one). Since the current right (yellow zero) of the person was an invalid move in fig 1, there is only one way to draw the new map. New map is drawn using the green 1's/0's with 3 new possible movements (1's adjacent to the 'x'.

Update: Based on your selected movement, 'x' will face towards that direction. In the example above, since 'x' moved down, 'x' is now facing green 1. On the game pad, up = move forward to green 1 with options of moving right to yellow 1 and down to blue 1 (back to (1, 1))

Continue to build the map this way and rotate the map to let (1, 1) be the top left hand corner.

Puzzle:June 15th, 2006: It's hard not to be tempted by parody. It will probably be a while until we can actually get online collaboration, but I was able to come up with some interesting variants of Minesweeper. You can try them out (as well as the standard game) this week:

Your puzzle, of course, is to figure out what the rules to the variants are. Shouldn't be too hard, although there are quite a few secrets to discover! If you'd like to have my Minesweeper game for longer than one week, please add my Minesweeper Gadget by clicking on this link -- I'll be adding new enhancements and variants as time allows.

Hints:Read about Minesweeper (invented by Robert Donner in 1989) at: Wikipedia

Answers / Solutions:Answers are usually (and will be) posted in the comments section. If you want to share your answers, you can send me a screenshot by email/url of your proud achievement. I have a new link that will archive all the puzzles and answers at this link.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

I received an email from George at justwidgets.com who features a web page that solves Wei-Hwa’s puzzle 3 using JavaScript. It would be great if someone creates a ‘Distance’ puzzle solver that allows users to enter his or her own matrix and numbers. Do I hear summer (winter for you people south of the equator) time project?

I received two sets of PERL code for puzzle 3. I am putting one on hold because he used a 4x4 matrix instead of a 5x5. I think it is a great way for all you computer science students/professionals to build up on those coding skills. As long as the puzzles can be logically solved / decoded / decrypted / calculated / mathematically represented (Don’t expect a computer to watch a video and count the amount of books in one segment of the video. At least not yet), you should be able to solve these puzzles using code.

Code by Adam B: p3-adamb.plGives you a nice matrix. If you want to contact the author, you can get his email address from me.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Wei-Hwa’s Puzzle Challenges easy? Have a talent for solving puzzles? You (or a person you know) should enter the Google US Puzzle Championship. Closing date for registration is June 15, 2006. So hurry!

Puzzle:June 9th, 2006: The Google US Puzzle Championship is next Saturday, June 16th. It's used to select the US Puzzle Team, but puzzle-lovers of all sorts should find something interesting in the puzzles. Let's have a big "G" (for Google):

Here's a puzzle based on Erich Friedman's "Distance," from the 2003 Google U.S. Puzzle Championship. Label 14 of the circles above with different numbers from 1 to 14, such that the distance between 1 and 2 is less than the distance between 2 and 3, and so on. Four circles should remain empty.

If the "±" sign is selected, you can click on the top part of a circle to increase it and click on the bottom to decrease it. Or, select a number in the palette and click on a circle to fill that number into the circle. Deselect the active selection to create a blank. You win if all the "distances" to the right turn green.

Answers / Solutions: Answers are usually (and will be) posted in the comments section. If you want to share your answers, you can send me a screenshot by email/url of your proud achievement. Last one is a rotten egg.

For all you world cup fans with no access to the TV (or at work) and want live streaming audio, here is a simple hack. BBC is providing live streaming audio for UK only IP Addresses. Here are steps to get around that restriction.

To all you international visitors (about 7%), I understand if you did not participate in the last puzzle. It requires you to be somewhat fluent in English. Lets hope the puzzles are more generic and everyone can participate. :-).

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

"An anagram (Greek ana- = "back" or "again", and graphein = "to write") is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce other words, using all the original letters exactly once... "

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

There was a cryptography documentary on breaking the WW2 Enigma Code and I joked about solving puzzle 2 with code. I went snooping into the puzzle code only to find out that the answers were embedded into the code (I did some AJAX projects mid last year and realized that the answers were not pulled from a remote server). AHA! I turned puzzle 2 into a puzzle and set out solving this simple encryption using PERL. In about 2 minutes, I figured out how to answer puzzle 2 using PERL code (Using my knowledge of T9 text prediction). :)

Decryption How-To:After looking at the code, here is the ALL IMPORTANT! Decryption key map (Sorry, do not know the correct definition - pair wise?):

Wei-Hwa's Code (Find under following comments in his code:Clean other symbols:// We filter out any input that isn't a letter.Decryption map:// build a map. (Not very efficient to do this every time, but what the heck.)Answers:// should probably be a map, but I'm lazy.Answer List:

Last week, I posted "Improving your Personalized Homepage" with a request to have a tabbed page module. Presto! After a discussion in the Google forums with the module creator, we have a beta tab module (Within 5 days!). Since this is in beta, use at own risk.

Theory Behind Module:All modules are loaded and managed within columns. Based on this fact, you can manipulate the modules to be visible/hidden within each column (display:none; for all you CSS gurus). Since there is no access to the backend of Google Personalized Homepages, the loading time will increase if you have lots of modules because all modules are loaded regardless of tabs.

Note: The module is undergoing lots of changes based on feedback. Screenshots might not reflect the current version of the module.

Adding the Module:

Fig 1. Tab Module/Tab Bar

When you add the tab module, a tab bar will appear between your search buttons and modules. (Fig. 1 - Circled in Red).

(Tab Module)

Adding a Tab:Click “New Tab”. I added a tab called Knowledge (Fig. 1) and the first tab is All (Default: All Modules <= Must have at all times).

Moving modules between tabs:

Fig 2. Moving modules between tabs.

This is a little tricky because there is no feedback when moving modules.Click “Show Setup” > Click “T” on the title bar to select the module (Fig. 2 - Circled in Red) > Click the desired Tab name (Fig. 2 - Circled in Blue). Module should disappear. Done!

Fig 3. Clicking the "Knowledge" Tab

To verify, click on the tab name and the module(s) should be there (Fig. 3).

Deleting/Renaming a tab:Click “Show Setup” and options will appear below the tab.

Remember, this is still in beta and I have found a few bugs (nothing major yet) when deleting tabs. To send feedback, go to this forum post or email me (I will email Matt, module creator).

Friday, June 02, 2006

We have puzzle 2! (Warning! Comments have answers.) I changed the puzzle group to a more popular group. For all of you who want to participate but do not have (or do not want) a Google account (Common people, Infinity plus one storage space!), go to:

June 2nd, 2006: If a tree falls in the woods because of a wound, then what little object will not hear the sound?

A Why Me Rhyme is a pair of words that look like they should rhyme (after all, only their first letter is different), but don't really. For example, depending on the colorist, Etrigan could be considered a lemon demon. See if you can figure out these twelve Why Me Rhymes from their descriptions:

What is heard when your little girl is having fun - D L

A disgustingly dirty sticker - F D

A siesta for weirdos - F B

A friendly rejection - G D

Lists of all sorts of animals to be eaten-G M

An unrefined crucifix - G C

A type of bar bet, maybe? - L W

Makes a news agency irrelevant - N R

Stamps that someone refuses to return - H P

Makes contact with feminine hygiene products - T D

A price reduction given only to certain noblemen - V D

Newer style of patio furniture -Y L

Hints: All answers have 2 words. Hints are shown above (red) as the first character of each word

Answers: I have the answers (Email me if you want the answers). Since users are posting the answers in the comment page, I will leave it there instead of posting it on a seperate website.

Thanks to Joanna (Solved the puzzle in record time!), littlepigletta, Josh, and other anonymous puzzle solvers.

Hidden Answer:The answer is hidden after the first question. Highlight the question and you will see the answer.

If a tree falls in the woods because of a wound, then what little object will not hear the sound?

Thursday, June 01, 2006

While we wait for Wei-Hwa’s next puzzle, I decided to run a series on Puzzles using Wikipedia as a guide. This is targeted at puzzle newbies and will cover topics on puzzles (including famous people).Topic: Acrostic [Definition]

"An acrostic is a poem or other text written in an alphabetic script, in which the first letter, syllable or word of each verse, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out another message…"

Excerpt from Wikipedia. Read the full article at .

Example: (Improvised!)COMA- Click on my Links, do not delay- On this great and wonderful day- My puzzle blog will show you the way- Ads by AdSense, I added in May

Note: Had to take the sentence out. :-). There is a hidden sentence in this acrostic.

Disclaimer: I AM not allowed (decided to obey the law) to use the acrostic before this because it violated AdSense Policies (under incentives). Having said that, this is still an EXAMPLE. :-)